Letter: Rebuild aging parts of DeKalb

Thank you for the editorial “DeKalb City Council needs plan for future.” About 10 years ago an excellent plan was developed and adopted by the City Council.

It included the idea that in order to preserve the rural character of the city and surroundings, the population should not continue to increase wildly with the need for services keeping us strapped to catch up. One of the results was “impact fees” which developers still complain about while asking the city to build roads (Irongate for example).

The plan suggested the city would be much better if it remained under 50,000 population. This would help to preserve DeKalb County farmland and the rural character.

We need redevelopment of the degraded area within the city, not destruction of farmland to produce more areas to become degraded.

So I suggest that any “plan development” start out by rolling out the existing one and start the public debate from it. Let’s improve what we have and not waste effort starting from a vacuum.